


Red Stamps

by uaevuon



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, Trans Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-31 21:04:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3992800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uaevuon/pseuds/uaevuon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi had gone through their files. She saw the number of them stamped with little red symbols that indicated a change in identification; change of name, change of gender.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Stamps

She was afraid. 

Levi did not like to admit she was afraid of anything. So she pushed it down, down until it was all hidden away and she was the murderous fuck-up teenage boy Kenny Ackerman taught her to be. She pushed it down until he left her in the dirt, until she accidentally picked up a little gang. 

Isabel liked to call her “big brother,” and Levi didn’t have the heart to correct the girl who looked up to her so much. 

Once, Levi costumed herself in a dress and assassinated some political bigshot; she didn’t remember his name for long, only the money and Farlan’s look of disapproval when Levi tried to convince him she should keep the dress. She didn’t even like it, and it felt all wrong to wear the fluffy, restrictive piece of crap, but it was the principle of the thing, really. 

For all that the two claimed Levi was the leader of their group, the truth was that she saw them running her life, deciding who she was with those little things that told her what they did and didn’t want to see her be. Levi loved them, and so she was everything they wanted her to be. 

By the time Erwin found her, Levi had nearly put those thoughts of who she wanted to be out of her mind. Her face in the mud disgusted her, as did the idea that their new living quarters were considered “clean”, but not so much as the physicals in which unfamiliar doctors poked and prodded at her body, administered vaccines with more needles than Levi had ever seen before in her life, and declared her “a physically fit but somewhat malnourished young man”. 

Isabel and Farlan died, and Levi regretted that she could never trust them enough. She could trust them with her life, but not with her womanhood. 

Levi quickly earned a name for herself as Humanity’s Strongest, and she wondered if Mike was ever even a little annoyed that a street rat with no formal training had beaten him out, but he was nothing but gracious. Other Scouts, however, were not so kind. They were often jealous and resentful, and Levi’s perpetual sour disposition did nothing to change that, but it was a lonely existence. She found herself taking meals with Mike and Erwin, and it felt strange to sit in companionable silence with the men who had blackmailed her and her gang -- her friends -- her family -- into joining the Survey Corps. 

New recruits tended to idolise her, which was annoying, but at least they listened when she gave them orders. 

“Yes, Sir!” they’d say. And Levi would scowl. 

Hanji bounced around her from time to time, and despite how outrageously annoying it was, there was something about that person that drew Levi in. 

“Something.” Like she didn’t already know for sure it was the androgyny. 

“Doesn’t that bother you?” Levi asked Hanji one day. 

“What does?”

“That.” Levi nodded at the scouts who’d just passed them by. They’d called Hanji “Sir”, and the group previous had said “Ma’am”. 

Hanji still seemed confused. 

“Some of them call you sir, some call you ma’am, doesn’t that bother you?”

“Why would it? There’s not really a word, is there?”

Now it was Levi’s turn to be confused. 

“I’m not really either, you know. But there isn’t a word, so I just let them say what they want. Why? Does it bother you?”

Levi shrugged. “I didn’t know that about you.”

“What did you think I was?” Hanji smiled. It clearly didn’t bother them. 

“I don’t know. I never really was sure.”

“Well then you weren’t wrong.” Hanji bounced slightly as they walked. “Bet you’re dying to know which barracks I slept in.”

“Not really.” Levi dook a deep breath, quiet so as not to let Hanji know she was nervous. “I slept in the men’s, so it doesn’t really say anything about us.”

“Well, of course you --” Hanji stopped walking. “Wait, you…?”

Levi grabbed their hand and pulled them aside, into an empty meeting room. She shut the door. Hanji looked startled, and straightened their glasses; not that it helped as their glasses were sort of naturally lopsided. 

“You…” Hanji started. 

“You’re the first person I’ve told.” Levi’s heart raced. “Don’t -- don’t tell anyone.” She cursed that stutter. 

“I won’t. Do you mean you’re… like me?”

“No. I’m a woman.” Definitely. _Definitely_. There was no doubt in Levi’s mind. There never had been. 

“Oh.”

Nothing changed. Upon Levi’s request to keep it between the two of them, Hanji kept calling her “Sir” in public -- but “Ma’am” in private. And Levi never told anyone else. Not even when Hanji told her that there were two others in her squad who were like the two of them, not content with who or what those in their lives had told them they were. 

But Levi didn’t know Nanaba or Moblit. She didn’t trust them. So she didn’t tell them anything. 

Then the 104th showed up. 

They were terrified of him. Every single one of them, save perhaps for Mikasa, was scared of him to varying degrees -- if not at first, eventually. 

And Levi was just as afraid of them. They cared about each other, fiercely, relentlessly. They’d already been through hell together. They’d already lost comrades. But it went back further than that, didn’t it? It had to. 

Levi had gone through their files. She saw the number of them stamped with little red symbols that indicated a change in identification; change of name, change of gender. All dated with the day they joined the Training Corps. 

Eren Jager. Armin Arlert. Sasha Braus. Jean Kirschtein. Ymir. Connie Springer. Bertholdt Fubar. 

More than half of the recruits from the 104th. 

It made Levi dizzy. And dizziness was not something that should befall any member of the Survey Corps, least of all Humanity’s Strongest. 

“Hanji,” she called out across the room. They shared an office out of necessity; Levi’s desk had neat stacks of files, and Hanji’s was a mess of reports and data all over the surface and tumbling onto the floor. “Have you seen these?”

“The recruit files, right?” Hanji looked up. “Yeah, I had to sign all their medical forms. Thought those might interest you.” They smiled. 

“This is… unbelievable.” Eren alone had been enough of a surprise, that bright red stamp on his file the night Levi visited his cell, but for all of them…? 

“You better believe it. And they’re all used to each other. They probably wouldn’t even blink if you told them about yourself.”

She didn’t plan to. But the option was there, should she ever want to.


End file.
